Looking Back: Early home razed in 1964

By DOUG McDONOUGH Herald Editor

Published 4:30 am, Saturday, March 1, 2014

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Herald File PhotoA local landmark and one of the community’s oldest homes, at First and Ash, was unceremoniously dismantled in early 1964. Built about 1900 with lumber brought from Amarillo by horse-drawn wagons, the six-room structure served being used as an apartment house before it was razed. less

Herald File PhotoA local landmark and one of the community’s oldest homes, at First and Ash, was unceremoniously dismantled in early 1964. Built about 1900 with lumber brought from Amarillo by horse-drawn ... more

Looking Back: Early home razed in 1964

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By DOUG McDONOUGH

Herald Editor

Historic preservation was not much of a consideration in 1964 when one of Plainview’s oldest homes was razed without ceremony.

Instead it was ripped apart by a wrecking crew using hammers and crowbars.

The structure’s demise did merit front-page coverage in the Friday, Feb. 21, 1964, edition of the Herald, which recounted some of its storied history.

Built by R.M. Irick about 1900, the Herald noted that most of the lumber used in the six-room stucco house at First and Ash had to be hauled from Amarillo by freight wagons pulled by teams of either 10 horses or mules. When completed, the residence was a “large, spacious house for the times, containing six rooms and a large front porch.”

Located across the street from the Broadway Park and on the north edge of the Runningwater Draw, Irick used lumber salvaged from his first wooden residence — a four-room structure — to build the new home for his family.

Irick’s daughter, Mrs. Tom Vaughn who lived at 704 Portland in 1964, said there were few houses in Plainview larger than four rooms at the time.

“My mother lived in the house until she died, just three months short of 100 years old,” Vaughn added.

The thought that the Irick family needed a new larger home in 1900 originated with Vaughn’s sisters. They felt that upon returning from college, they “had to have a new house.”

Her mother owned a small millinery store in Plainview at the time and made hats for women. Her dad was noted for helping build the first paved highways from Plainview.

Vaughn, who was 84 in 1964, recalled one winter when her father went to Amarillo for coal and food and was snowbound there for several days.

Enroute back to Plainview he was stopped by a group of people who wanted some of his supplies. He explained to them that they already had been promised to various individuals in Plainview.

Nonetheless, the group “helped themselves” to the coal and food so they wouldn’t starve or freeze, and Irick was forced to return to Amarillo for more supplies.

The front porch of the Irick home offered a remarkable view of the draw, and sometimes in the early morning, according to Vaughn, one could see other cities, like a mirage “floating over the horizon.”

Thinking about her old family home, Vaughn said it brought back other memories of the early days of Plainview.

For instance, she thought of Thornton Jones, who operated Plainview’s first store from a tent across from the courthouse square. When he needed to leave town or be way from the store, he would leave a cigar box out for customers to leave money in when they did their own self-service shopping. She said Jones never lost a dime through his honor system.

She said Plainview had one drug store and two churches at the time, and she remembered the death of a Mrs. Mitchell as the community’s first fatality from an auto mishap.

Ora Mae Irick Vaughn died Nov. 4, 1975, and is buried in Plainview Cemetery, as are her parents, R.M. Irick who died on June 3, 1943, and Amanda Irick who died Dec. 18, 1957.